Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct

Valucre has a code of conduct that is members are expected to follow. This is primarily a matter of etiquette. We want the site to be fun for everyone and part of that is having a civil community to interact with, or at least be around.

It should not be, and is not, an expectation that staff ought to police the forum. Members are expected to take responsibilities for their own issues with other members by following the Formal Complaint Process. If you feel mistreated, you absolutely have the power to speak up and deal with it.

Administration reserves the right to punish or expel any player who is in violation of these rules.

1. Do not flame, troll or harass others.

2. Do not post hate speech. No OOC racism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination or spreading of hateful speech and ideologies will be tolerated.

3. Do not advertise on our forums. That is not what they are for. There is an Affiliates thread to which staff adds websites and forums we all accept. Users may also use their signature space to post approved links.

4. Do not add copyrighted or otherwise plagiarized content to our website. The clear exception to this being that one is acting under the Creative Commons License.

5. Do not link to, add or advertise warez or stolen video or content to our website.

6. Do not post pornographic material. Graphic or explicit posts of a sexual nature will be removed. Use of obscene words is acceptable, but not necessarily encouraged. In order to play this game and enjoy all facets of its nature, one must have a sufficiently mature mind. However, gratuitous and unnecessary use of obscenities is discouraged and will be handled properly.

7. Do not bring up your issues with other members publicly. The forum is not a place to act on your personal vendettas and issues. This includes stuff you've read in IM, disagreements about roleplay, and things like that. Use the formal complaint process to bring your issues to the attention of staff members.

8. Do not metagame. OOC should stay OOC, and IC should stay IC. If something happens to your character, do not take it personally, nor should you use OOC knowledge to further your PC's agenda.

9. Do not powergame. Powergaming is no fun for everyone else. Don't go around self-modding your character so that he's the only one who gets to do awesome stuff.

10. Respect the game world. Although this is a fantasy setting, we expect a certain amount of realism. New nations do not appear out of nowhere, nor do governments topple for no reason. Every event IC should have a rational explanation within the game world. In other words, no god-modding.

Remember, this is a game. We're all here to have fun.

The administration reserves the right to jump to any level of punishment they feel is appropriate for the situation, and generally accounts warned for violating the Code of Conduct will suffer the following:

One warning will result in being banned from the thread or chat room in question.
Two warnings will result in having the ability to post in the OOC sections of the forum taken away.
Three warnings will result in an automatic ban for one week while the administrators consider further action.

The Complaint Process

Do you have a complaint that you wish to file against another Valucre member? If so, this is the process you need to follow. We do not address member interactions that take place off site. Being polite throughout the entire process is instrumental to its success. It is hard to gather any kind of sympathy for being flamed or verbally abused when you engage in the same activity.

• Take it to PM. Very often arguments and disputes are a matter of flared tempers and misunderstandings. Taking an argument off the public facing portion of Valucre and into PM can do a great deal towards diffusing tension, and if no resolution can be achieved, then you can make it very clear that you would like it if that user did not interact with you.

• If after this private communication and an explicit message asking to be left alone, the user continues to negatively interact with you, place them on Forum Ignore. You can do this by going to their profile and clicking "Add to Ignore List". This will prevent you from seeing any of their posts, and prevent them from being able to send messages to you.

• If they continue to harass you after being placed on forum ignore, for example on an alternate screen name, now is the time to involve administration. Use the Contact Us button at the bottom of the page, or the Valucre PM system, to get a hold of any member of administration. Complaints should be structured and formal so that everyone understands it is a serious issue. If you do not make them formal, then we will dismiss your complaints. If you can't take it seriously, why should we? Keep name-calling to an absolute minimum.

Transcripts and screenshots of conversations and links to thread with the offensive behavior are great examples of corroborating evidence. Without these, it's a matter of one member's word against the other's.

• Formal complaints are reserved strictly for serious offenses, not for unpleasant disagreements.

• If you come across a post that is blatantly offensive, unreasonably vulgar, or illegal then you can Report the post. Do this by clicking the Exclamation (!) symbol at the bottom of the post in question. This will send a notice to the administrators' e-mails and it will be dealt with quickly. We take reported posts seriously and stress that the Report feature should not be used or taken lightly. Abuse of the Report function may result in administrative action.

• In regards to lodging a formal complaint against a staff member, the process is nearly identical with one or two differences. First, note that a staff member can act either in a staff capacity or in a member capacity, and in what capacity they were acting when they offended you determines what you should do. If your issue is with them as a staff member, rather than them as a site member, bring your grievance up with the team leader of that division; they will include administration as needed. If your grievance is with a team leader, then follow the same process and bring up your offense to administration.